PC Freezing/Crashing While Playing Games

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WigglesR

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Jan 23, 2016
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4,630
Built my PC about a year and a half ago (bought from iBP) and have since replaced the PSU, all stock fans and the RAM. Been playing Overwatch/Borderland Pre-Sequel recently and I can only play for about 5-10 minutes on each one before the computer crashes. Temperatures are stable hovering at around 60 degrees c at the time of the crashes. The activity on the GPU and CPU seem fine (from what Speedfan and AMD Radeon are telling me). I've no idea what can be causing this. I've ran into this problem before but it only started getting bad again about two days ago, with about two months since the last major occurrences. (I also run Chrome with YouTube open while playing Pre-Sequel.) I also got an IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error while playing Pre-Sequel.

Specs:

Operating System
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
CPU
AMD FX-9590
Vishera 32nm Technology
RAM
16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 669MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. 990FXA-UD3 (CPU 1)
Graphics
S24E510C (1920x1080@60Hz)
HP 2159 (1920x1080@60Hz)
2048MB ATI AMD Radeon R9 200 Series (C.P. Technology)
Storage
74GB INTEL SSDSA2M080G2GC SATA Disk Device (SSD)
931GB Western Digital WDC WD10EZEX-75M2NA0 SATA Disk Device (SATA)
Optical Drives
HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH24NSC0 SATA CdRom Device
PSU
Corsair RM1000 (1000 watt)
 
Solution
Darkbreeze
Equipment: i7-6700k
Gigabyte Z170X-Gaming 5
16GB G.Skill Tri-X 3000mhz
Sapphire R9 280 (Temp)
EVGA G2 750w
Noctua NH-U14S
with an NF-A14 PWM fan
4 x Aerocool DS 140 red/black case fans with 4 Noctua NF-A15's as backups
Fractal Design Define S
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I also find it intriguing that you're able to maintain temperatures below TJmax on a 9xxx series system that's using a single width radiator in an exhaust configuration. People with high end air and big water coolers have trouble, even when their case cooling is top notch.
 
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Got it wrong, top IS outtake. Back is intake.
 
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Rear cannot be an intake. It must be an exhaust. Same as the top. Turn the fan around if you are sure the rear fan is bringing air into the case through the radiator rather than taking air through the radiator and out the back. As I said, front, side and bottom fans should all be intake. Top and rear fans should always be exhaust, except in cases where you have a top mounted radiator configured as an intake, which I don't recommend anyhow but some people do.

The better method would be to mount your radiator in front, if it will reach, as an intake, mount a new fan in the rear as an exhaust, turn your side fans into intake fans and mount at least one, or preferably two, exhaust fans up top.
 
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He already swapped out both dimms, PC still failed after 5 mins. Don't think memtest will help.

Thinking Video card swap, then MB.
 
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It's 5 years old at least, haha, will run memtest just incase and SeaTools, though I'm no longer using the SSD since the clean install wouldn't let me dl windows on it, will also do your fan thing. I also have the option of swapping GPU's for a test.
 
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So what do you not understand about the fans?

It's pretty simply really. Front fans are generally intake because the hottest components are towards the rear of the case. It doesn't make sense to bring air IN at an area where the most heat is. That's where you want to take air OUT at, so it doesn't stay in the case any longer than necessary and doesn't have the chance to transfer it's heat to the air around other components.

Cooler air tends to be closer to the floor/ground, so the lower the fan is, the cooler the air it brings in will be, which is why power supplies were moved to the bottom of the case and the intake on them was flipped to draw cool outside air in rather than using the already heated air inside the case like top mounted power supplies/cases used to do.

Side fans have the unique benefit of being able to bring cool outside air directly in on top of the CPU, GPU card and motherboard, which is a nice feature on systems that have thermal issues or few fan locations, especially if there are only one or two front fans or a lot of obstructions.

I think you'd also benefit greatly from doing some cable management and getting the cabling inside your case all tidied up and tied away from interfering with the flow of air. You'd be surprised how much that can affect component cooling, especially RAM and motherboard components.

Heat rises, always, so fans at the top of the case should naturally be exhaust fans, drawing all that heated air out of the case, making room for cooler air brought in by the intake fans at the front, sides or bottom of the case.

Rear fan should always be exhaust and there are no exceptions to this that I'm aware of. Even the oldest of case designs utilize this method. That rear location is almost directly responsible from removing heated air displaced by the CPU cooler if an air cooler is being employed or drawing heated air away from the motherboard VRMs so cool air can flow over them. It also helps to form a diagonal-ish airflow path from the front intake fans, directly across the middle of the board, GPU card and CPU, that creates a draft effect which causes heat to be almost instantly funneled out the rear and top rear fan locations.


Here is a good read:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cooling-airflow-heatsink,3053-2.html
 
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iBuypower and CyberpowerPC are the two biggest jokes in the system builder communities, if you ask anybody with a measure of sense at all. Most the cases and power supplies they use are inferior, by far, to what you could get for a very small additional investment, and they don't provide much information about them. I don't even see any product information on that AZZA case.

There isn't even an AZZA EOS 209 listed on the AZZA website that I can see. I can't really tell much from the pictures either. It might be a model sold exclusively to iBuypower.
 
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That's ok. Bottom mounted fans are rarely used because the PSU cabling is almost always in the way anyhow. Front, rear and top fans are the most important ones, but if you have side fan locations, those can definitely be useful. Still hard to tell anything from those images.

Is the intake fan on your PSU facing into the case or does it face the floor through the vent in the bottom of the case?

Is your PC sitting on carpet? If so, you need to get a hard flat surface for it to sit on, like a scrap of countertop material or a wide board, so that the intake for the power supply is not blocked and so that when the exhaust fans blow out, creating a vacuum, cool air can be sucked in through the unused bottom case fan location a little bit at least.

You should pull the front panel off the case and see if there are fans, or fan locations, behind the front panel.

You might even want to run the system with the side panel completely off, temporarily, and see if anything improves.
 
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I have no side panel fans, the PSU fan is facing my desk, my PC sits on my desk, my desk is on carpet. There's a stock (bad) fan in the front, top is out and the back 2 with the radiator in between are intake.
 
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These seem to be contradictory statements, leading to confusion on my part. So let's start from the beginning.

Exactly how many fan locations DO you have, and where are they, regardless of whether there are fans in them or not. AND, which locations actually have fans?
 
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What is with the "bad" fan? It's not still connected right? Probably a good idea to replace it. If there are two front fan locations, I'd highly recommend you populate both those locations with intake fans. Since you say you have no "side" fans, what side fans were you referring to earlier?
 
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For now I'd say move your top fan to the top rear location and make sure it's blowing out. Turn the fan on your radiator so that it too is blowing out of the case through the radiator. Leave the side panel off for now since you have zero intake fans working. Chances are at least somewhat good if the only intake fan you've had running in there was the fan at the top of the case, something has been thermally damaged on the motherboard. Especially if the rear fan was also not only blowing in, but bringing the heat from the radiator with it.
 
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I meant back fans, not side, mb. the "bad" fan is a stock fan, so I consider it bad since it's worse than my other 3. There is only 1 frontal fan slot, I will replace the fan in the front. There's 2 fans on my radiator btw. The fan on top is blowing out, the 2 on the radiator are blowing in.
 
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Before you said the "two side fans" which as you corrected to be the radiator fans, were blowing out. So they are in an intake configuration in reality though right? Intake means blowing into the case bringing cool air in. Exhaust means blowing out, exhausting heated air. Let's stick to those terms for the sake of uniformity and eliminating misunderstandings.

You really do not need two fans on your radiator. Most testing shows very minimal gains from push pull configurations with dual fans. I'd remove one of those fans and use it in front as an intake. Use the remaining fan on the radiator but turn it around so that it blows OUT as an exhaust. You want the radiator mounted to the case and the fan blowing through the radiator out of the case. Move the top fan to the top back location and turn it over as an exhaust fan too. Move the stock fan from the front of the case to the other top location, also as an exhaust.

That should leave you with one front intake and three exhaust fans. That creates a negative pressure situation which is good for cooling performance. It would be a lot better if there was a second front intake, but you deal with what you have when you have to. A different case might be a very good idea, but it may not even be the thermals which are your entire problem. Let's just keep in mind that we're trying to correct a problem with your cooling, but the problem with your system in general may or may not be related to the poor configuration of the cooling system. Still, it's a very good idea to get this all straightened out anyhow.

I'm thinking the chances are good that there's already been damage to something from heat, but it's hard to say at this point.

After you get the fans all straightened out, I'd suggest you download and install HWinfo:

http://www.hwinfo.com/download.php


Run HWinfo and select "sensors only". Take screenshots of the sensors and post them here. It will probably take three screenshots after scrolling to capture all the sensor data. You can post images directly here in the thread as follows:



You can post any hosted image into the post by simply adding the following code where you want it in your reply (Even quick replies), remembering to replace the highlighted text shown below with the actual link to your image.


qn8gox.jpg
 
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